


if you try, sometimes (you get what you knead)

by Stacicity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Angst, F/M, Found Family, Georgie/Hungarian food (mentioned), Hurt/Comfort, In this house loving Tim hours are all hours, M/M, food as a love language, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23287501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity
Summary: It starts with an abundance of boeuf bourguignon and ends up as a team tradition.Food and love in uncertain times.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 63
Kudos: 271





	if you try, sometimes (you get what you knead)

It all started with some tupperware. 

Tim wandered into the kitchenette that served as breakroom, focus group and occasional wrestling ring to most of the Archive staff to find Martin determinedly piling tupperware boxes between the cartons of milk and forgotten cans of coke. 

“Gone into catering now, have you?” he asked, leaning across the counter to flick the kettle on and grinning as Martin blushed. Not because it was any great achievement - the opposite, really. Martin would blush at a traffic light. He was just one of life’s blushers, skin perpetually primed to go strawberry-red at the faintest provocation and since Tim was nothing if not a Walking Provocation it would be a travesty not to take advantage. 

“Er - more of an engineering job, right now,” Martin mumbled, giving a little shrug. Tim leaned around to get a closer look and snorted at the jumble of fridge-tetris'd boxes, shaking his head and straightening up to pull two mugs out of the cupboard. Only fair he make a cup of tea for Martin once in a while given how often he seemed to be scurrying off to the kitchen with mugs either full or empty. Like Mother Tea-resa Sasha had remarked once, and the ensuing back-and-forth had only finished when Jon wandered by, head buried in a statement, only poking out from behind it to contribute _Florence Chai-tingale_ and disappearing back to his office before any of them could react. 

“What’ve you got there, anyway?” Tim asked, spooning sugar into Martin’s mug and hopping up onto the counter, swinging his legs back and forth. 

“Er - beef stew. I mean, it’s a bourguignon.” 

Tim gave the small mountain of tupperware another sceptical look. “Have you made friends with a small rat who sits on your head?” 

Martin rolled his eyes and didn’t reply. Tim let the silence settle in with the fuzzy sound of the heating kettle and then extended a leg to poke Martin in the ribs with one foot, grinning as Martin flailed at him to bat it away. “Well?” 

“If you _must_ know,” Martin huffed, “my nan makes a great stew. And every time we go round it’s just the three of us but she makes enough for an army and then she says that _she_ won’t eat it, and I don’t have a freezer, and it’s not like I’ll get through it on my own, so.” He gestured at the mini-fridge like it held the obvious answer and Tim hopped off the counter when the kettle clicked itself back off, reaching for the teabags. 

“So, you’re going to feed the whole office your nan’s beef stew ‘til we keel over?” 

“Something like that,” Martin sighed, and - yep, he was blushing again. Tim shook his head, warm and fond. 

“Well, it looks delicious. I’ll send an email round or something. Rosie forgets her lunch every day and Sash said yesterday that if she has to see one more sandwich from Pret she’s going to lose her mind, so. Lunch for Team Spooky?” 

Martin looked up, apparently surprised, and then beamed, hands flitting at his sides like he couldn’t quite figure out what to do with them before Tim leaned in to extricate the milk from the tupperware labyrinth in the fridge, pressing a mug of tea into Martin’s hands to still them. “Yeah,” Martin replied, nodding like he was firming up the thought in his head, “yeah, sounds good.” 

As it happened, the stew  _ was _ delicious. Apparently Martin’s nan had strong views about lardons and _bouquet garni_ and only cooking with wine that one might deign to drink on its own, and all of that amounted to a damn fine stew. Tim sat with Martin in the kitchenette as people drifted in and out, noting how he looked up each time someone shadowed the doorway, and then down again just as fast. 

Jon didn’t make an appearance. Tim was tactful enough not to say anything, and invested enough in Martin’s cow-eyed crush on their prickly Archivist to watch while Martin headed off to the depths of the archives with a tupperware of steaming bourguignon. He came back empty-handed with a vaguely flustered look, and when Tim poked his head around Jon’s door later that night the tupperware was empty and placed neatly to the side. 

Stew cleared, Martin left the Archives with a bag full of empty tupperware, and that could easily have been the end of it, were it not for the fact that Sasha sidled in the next day with a tupperware of her own, placing it on Martin’s desk and shrugging off his inquisitive expression. 

“Onigiri, tamagoyaki, seaweed salad. Nothing crazy, don’t worry. I mean, I had to call my mum to borrow her pan, not exactly a lot of _makiyakinabe_ floating around in Homebase but. Fair’s fair. You handled lunch yesterday.” 

Just as Martin was stammering his way through what sounded like a combination of profuse thanks and absolute confusion Tim leaned across his desk, chin in his hands. 

“No lunch for me, Sash? You wound me.” 

“Well, did _you_ cater for the office?”

“Nope. But neither did Martin, his nan did all the work!” Tim teased, and Sasha rolled her eyes. 

“Oh, shut up. I made some extra onigiri, you can have one of those. And Jon, if he ever appears.” 

Office conclusions on onigiri were as follows: attractive (like something out of a Ghibli film, Martin murmured, and Sasha’s beam spread across her face like a firework), delightfully portable, apparently magical. Jon didn’t appear, but Tim noticed one of the extra onigiri disappear mysteriously around the time that Martin went to hand Jon one of his latest reports. Given that when he came back he seemed in good spirits, Tim could only assume that a) the gift had been well received, and b) Martin hadn’t been snapped at like he normally was when he dared approach the dragon with a statement that was anything less than meticulously-researched and cited. Good times all around. 

* * * 

The routine continued. Tim visited his mum and lingered in the ever-warm, ever-loud kitchen, stealing fried plantain from the kitchen towels on the counter and laughing when she rapped his knuckles with a wooden spoon, watching her move through the making of jollof rice like she could do it in her sleep. Probably could, knowing her. Family wasn’t exactly easy for any of them these days, Danny’s absence as clear as a missing tooth and as hard to keep from prodding at, but there was still jollof rice, and there was still the kitchen. When Tim brought in a few tupperwares for the others, teasing Martin about how the chilli made him flush bright red all over again, it felt just a bit more like home. 

He brought in a box for Jon, too. Put it on his desk, didn’t linger too long for the awkward response, and they both seemed grateful for it. At any rate, when Martin next went in with a cup of tea, he came out with an empty tupperware. 

Martin’s next offering was a cake, lemon drizzle (classic pensioner’s choice), the sugar on top sticking to Tim’s fingers and Sasha’s cheeks, and when they brought in a slice for Jon he seemed so outraged by the thought of stickiness on statements or the recorders that he all but chased them out. He slunk out half an hour later, though, apparently for an entirely separate purpose, but could be persuaded to linger in the kitchen for a few minutes and nibble at a slice. Tim and Sasha carried the conversation to let Martin blush and stammer, and when Jon absently licked a grain of sweet, lemon-scented sugar off his thumb and mumbled something about Martin going on Bake Off Tim couldn’t help but turn back to see Martin’s startled, delighted smile bloom across his face. 

So it continued. Sasha lectured them on the finer points of folding gyoza and frying karaage while searching for some sort of shallow receptacle to put soy sauce in, reaching over to position Martin’s hands, then Tim’s, around the chopsticks she’d brought with her. Tim pestered his mum for a solid week before she’d reveal her pepper soup recipe, dragging him behind her at Brixton Market to find the right spices, heaped in piles of alien, unfamiliar roots and powders and seeds. Martin’s contributions turned sweeter still - meringues shot through with veins of raspberry like the ice creams Tim remembered from primary school, brownies so dense and fudgy that Sasha threw her hands up and declared she’d found heaven (and when Tim stole a chocolate-flavoured kiss from her later between the bookshelves he couldn’t help but agree). Martin ferried sweet and savoury gifts between the kitchenette and Jon’s office and each time seemed less nervous, each time returned with his shoulders more relaxed and his eyes dreamier. 

The biggest shock was Jon, lingering awkwardly in the kitchen three weeks after the bourguignon with a cup of tea turning cold at his elbow, coughing as Tim walked in with his arm thrown around Martin’s shoulders and nudging a few tupperwares across the counter. 

“Er. Over-order last night?” Tim asked, unable to stop himself despite Martin’s elbow in his ribs, and Jon’s eyes shot downwards as he visibly bit back some sort of retort, hackles shooting up and then down again. 

“No,” he said shortly, jutting his chin up like a threat and shooting Martin a nervous look. “It’s, er - it’s paprikash. A sort of chicken stew.” 

Tim stared at Jon for a moment, stunned into speechlessness, until Martin elbowed him none-too-subtly in the ribs and said, “well, we’d best get Sasha, hadn’t we?”. His tone was so exactly like his mum’s when she said he’d _better go and give Auntie Chichi a kiss hadn’t he, Timothy_ that he was spurred into action before he’d fully processed the instruction. When he and Sasha made their way back the paprikash was heated through and Jon was sitting next to Martin, murmuring something about an ex who had a weakness for nokedli and nowhere in Oxford to eat it, so Jon had rolled up his sleeves to tackle them himself. Tim gave a little internal wince at the idea that Jon might launch into talking about an ex like that (was he _blind_ , couldn’t he _see?_ ) but Martin was still staring at him starry-eyed like a kid meeting Father Christmas for the first time, like he was afraid if he spoke he might shatter the bubble around them and spoil the magic. 

“Seems a shame to interrupt,” Tim murmured to Sasha and she grinned, leaning into his side, poking him in the ribs gently. 

“You just want to see if they’ll do anything embarrassing.” 

“Well. I mean, _yeah_. But they’re also quite cute,” he replied. “Young love, you know.” Sasha rolled her eyes and dragged Tim in to eat. Jon fussed about the right levels of paprika and properly tempering the sour cream until Sasha threatened to throw something at him if he didn’t admit it was delicious _right this second_ , and Tim winked at Martin across the table when he managed to catch his eye. 

* * * 

The Bake Off comments had to come to something. The final rolled around and Sasha lay on Tim’s sofa with her legs in his lap, absently combing her fingers through Martin’s hair where he sat on the floor. Jon curled in the armchair across from them, running his fingers around the rim of a glass of wine (a _glass_ rather than a plastic cup, Tim could hear his mum’s pride from here) and laughing despite himself when Tim pretended to swoon every time Selasi came on-screen. There was a brief but frenzied debate on the various merits of the three candidates before a general consensus that whoever won, nobody would own their hearts quite as much as Val. 

“What was it she said? Something like- when she bakes, she puts love into it?” Sasha asked, well into her (third) glass of wine and swaying just slightly where she leaned back against the arm of the sofa, anchored by Tim’s hand on her ankle. He rubbed his thumb over the strip of skin between her sock and her jeans and watched Martin’s eyes slip across the room to Jon, like the word _love_ triggered a homing instinct sending him right back to roost wherever it was that Jon had last been. 

“Yeah,” Martin murmured, smiling to himself. “You, er- you stir love into it, and then it’s special.” 

Tim and Sasha traded their obligatory _we’re surrounded by idiots_ eye-rolls and Tim watched Jon’s cheek darken, chin tucked into his jumper and knees drawn up close, a curled-up hedgehog of a man all spines and sparkling eyes. Tim could see where Martin was coming from, really. Once he stopped being so damn prickly, Tim could have seen himself leaning into him after the Institute holiday party, stealing the cigarette from his hand and kissing the smoke and the scowl from his lips. Still, that didn’t prove much. He’d have done the same to Martin, too. 

Sasha’s foot dug into his ribs and Tim looked up to beam at her, topping up her wine glass obligingly when she shook it in his direction and nudging a glass of water over to her too. He blithely ignored the eye-roll she gave him in favour of watching Martin extend the bottle to Jon, their fingertips brushing at the handover, Martin’s cheeks warm through like he was lit from within by coals, like Prometheus stealing handfuls of tender flame to hide within his chest. 

Val from Bake Off. She knew what she was on about. 

Tim squeezed Sasha’s ankle and flipped the TV over to University Challenge, watching Jon’s head come up like an interested meerkat at the prospect of showing off, and poured himself another glass of wine to use as an excuse when he couldn’t tell his Assyrians from his Akkadians. 

Martin went sick the week after that, and the flow of cakes and biscuits trickled off to a halt, stopped entirely when Martin came back with ashen cheeks and dark circles under his eyes, reduced to living in the Archives. The cups of tea came thick and fast and Tim watched Jon press a tupperware into Martin’s hands, ignoring his protests and disappearing back to work before Tim could see what it was, what was in it, what made Martin’s cheeks flush so dark when he opened the lid to look inside. 

He never did find that out. After the Archive was invaded Tim spent a few weeks off doing physiotherapy and therapy-therapy and resigning himself to the stark, white circles burrowed in against his skin that caught his eye every time he looked at them, left him wearing long-sleeves at home and doing his best to deflect his mum’s careful, tactful questions. Sasha started taking long lunch breaks out of the office and Jon retreated so hard and so fast into some sort of paranoid mania that it gave Tim whiplash, made him shocked and hurt and furious all at once with nobody to speak to about it but Martin who-

Martin who brought in a cake, once, and watched Jon stare at it like it was poisoned (maybe _exactly_ like it was poisoned), watched Tim nibble half-heartedly at a slice that turned to ash in his mouth, took most of it back home with a strange look in his eyes and didn’t try again. 

Tim started buying sandwiches from Pret again. 

* * * 

The van they hired to take them up to Great Yarmouth was just about big enough for four idiots and enough C4 to bring down half the coastline. Tim went to climb into the passenger seat and met Basira’s gimlet stare, heard Daisy clear her throat behind him, muffled a stream of increasingly inventive swear words and stomped around to get into the back with Jon, flopping down between rucksacks and water bottles and the foreboding case of explosives and detonators. He heard Martin before he saw him, the clatter of footsteps down the Archive steps and out to stand in front of the van’s open double-doors, face red with exertion and embarrassment, lips pressed tight against a flood of words, tupperware thrust in front of him. 

Jon and Tim exchanged a look and for the first time in months Tim almost felt a pang of sympathy for him. The silence stretched on, stiff and awkward, before Jon reached forwards to take the tupperwares from Martin like he thought they might explode. 

“It’s a couple of hours to Great Yarmouth. Thought you might like something to eat,” Martin mumbled, sounding almost defensive. Jon opened and closed his mouth a few times and just as Tim was about to step in to try and salvage something from the situation Martin clambered up into the back of the van with them, eyes suspiciously bright but expression resolute. “Look, just- come back. Alright? Come back.” He fixed them each with a glare. Jon met it with his eyes wide and his expression drawn, a man facing his death. Tim ignored the sharp pang that ran through his chest, as sudden and unavoidable as lightning through him, ice against a sensitive tooth, clean and anchoring and terrible. He wasn’t coming back. But whilst he was enough of a bastard to hit himself over the head with that knowledge, he didn’t have the spine to look Martin in the eye and tell him so. 

Jon was staring at the tupperware like it held the secrets of the universe rather than what looked like some sort of dumpling (pierogi, perhaps?) and Tim pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes, stifling a groan. 

“Martin-” he started, resigned, voice grating on his own ears, and opened his eyes to see Martin holding tightly to Jon’s hand, already reaching out for Tim too, and he-

Yeah. He didn’t have the strength not to lean in. Martin’s jumper was soft under his cheek and though he could certainly do without feeling Jon’s skinny arm awkwardly hanging between them, he could close his eyes and pretend he could smell lemon cake, hear someone ( _Sasha_ ) laughing, remember that before all of this, before Jon had started stalking them, accusing him (accusing _Martin_ ) of murder, he’d been a skinny bundle of limbs curled in an armchair, eyes soft , drooping with the wine, and Tim had thought-

He swallowed thickly and lifted his head to press an impulsive kiss to Martin’s cheek, squeezed his arm, felt him like an anchor. Martin wasn’t stammering these days - hadn’t been, he realised, for weeks now - had somehow grown more solid, held up by an iron core of grief, gripping their arms as if he could somehow stop them from shaking apart, hold together what was already long-broken. Jon mumbled something Tim couldn’t hear into Martin’s other shoulder and Tim felt Martin’s cheek twitch into a smile under his lips. “Yeah, I know,” he murmured, absently brushing Jon’s hair back from his face, turning to look at Tim with his face pale, the blood drained entirely from it. 

“Look,” Tim started, trying to piece together with clumsy words what he’d spent the last weeks ripping apart, “just-”

“Yeah,” Martin sounded _tired_ , shook his head a little, squeezed Tim’s hand hard. “I _know_. We can talk when you’re back.” 

And Tim didn’t really have anything to say to that. 

No perfect, film-ready goodbyes. Martin clambered awkwardly backwards out of the van and Jon sat with Tim in the back, the tupperware between them somehow more dangerous than all the explosives mere metres away. It took an hour for Tim to open the lid and take out a pierogi, trying not to think of it too much like a last meal. 

“Do you think you’ll be coming back?” Jon asked twenty minutes after that and Tim shrugged, listening to the muffled sound of the Archers theme tune from the main body of the van. 

“Does it matter?” 

“ _Yes_ ,” Jon bit out, tone frosty, and Tim kept his eyes resolutely on the dark wall in front of them, letting the faintest reverberations settle into the air.

“One less person to share cake with,” he added a few minutes later, and almost smiled at Jon’s exasperated sigh. Even now, it was so easy to get under his skin. 

“We haven’t had cake in weeks.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Tim sighed, closed his eyes this time. “If we get back, I’m buying Martin a cake.”

“We can go halves.” Jon sounded just as tired as Martin. How long had they all been just running on fumes for? Tim glanced sidelong at Jon, felt words dig their claws in in his throat, swallowed them back with another bite of pierogi and settled back as the van carried them further from all they’d left behind. At least in the end, there’d be cake. 

**Author's Note:**

> The season 5 trailer is tomorrow and I am afraid so here have some thoughts on cake. Can you tell I don't write anything serious ever.
> 
> [Find me on tumblr](https://ajcrawly.tumblr.com) and chat to me about boeuf bourguignon and Bisexual Icon Timothy Stoker .


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